A team of eye specialists from the Rayjon Eye Clinic in Canada is in Corozal Town offering clinics at the Methodist Eye Clinic. Today when our newsteam stopped by the clinic was full to capacity as Belizeans arrived to benefit from the special eye care provided by the visiting medical team.

The Rotary Club of Corozal is hosting the visiting group. According to Club member and organiser, Loretta Randall, so far the response has been of high volume

Loretta Randall, Rotary member

“Today was Monday and we’ll do it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday we are going to try keep up portion of that day available for the students who some of them get out of school a little bit early and do have some that have prescriptions that we hope we could will fill those for them too.”

The medical team’s leader, Bob Topliffe, explained that the medical team is made up of 21 volunteers, including four doctors. The team came to Belize with three thousand eye glasses which will be used to help to restore vision for many.

Bob Topliffe, Team Leader

“We have a system set up where the patients go through a series of stations to get different tests then when they get their prescription form the doctor; they go to the fitting area where they receive a pair of glasses now these glasses were donated by Canadian people they are new glasses but they are in very good conditions because we do a quality control check before we bring them and we brought about 3000 pairs of glasses with us but at the end of the week whatever is left over we are going to leave in Belize.”

Bob Topliffe, Team Leader

“If a patient has a vision problem they can be corrected with glasses we will provide that pair of glasses, if we do not have those glasses in our inventory we will take their prescription home and we will make up a pair of glasses and they’ll be sent back for that patient, the biggest challenges are in situations where the doctor discover where the patient may have glaucoma or cataracts which requires surgery and we don’t do that we make a referral to an ophthalmologist to perform that task.”

The team will be at the Methodist Eye Clinic until Friday. Persons who wish to benefit from the free eye services are reminded that no appointments are needed and the service is based on first come first served.